


leave a light on for me

by demonicneonfishy



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, F/F, POV Quynh | Noriko, Post-Canon, Recovery, Team as Family, we consider drowning for five hundred years torture here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:55:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29926176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demonicneonfishy/pseuds/demonicneonfishy
Summary: Quýnh is okay, until the sun goes down.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30
Collections: The Old Guard Femslash Fortnight





	leave a light on for me

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: fave headcanon  
> the headcanon in this case is that quynh can't stand the dark

Quýnh is okay.

Some days, she doesn’t once think about the water, doesn’t once feel the phantom sensation of drowning on dry land. These days become more and more frequent as time passes. 

Quýnh is okay, until the sun goes down.

Because even after all the progress she has made, she cannot stand the dark. After all, at the bottom of the ocean there is no light. When she had finally reached the surface, the sunlight had hurt her eyes. Then, in the time she spent on her own, adjusting as best she could, she had always slept with the light on.

Now, it is not so easy. Not when the others turn the lights off to sleep at night. And she does not know how to tell them. 

So she stops sleeping at night. She roams the halls of their safehouses instead, finding small tasks to keep her distracted. In the day, she naps on whatever piece of furniture is unoccupied. It’s not a good solution, she knows that, but she doesn’t know what else to do.

The others know something is wrong, but when they ask, she shakes her head and smiles and says she’s okay. She knows they don’t believe her. But none of them know how to talk about the time she was under, and so they avoid the subject. Instead, they take to helping in smaller ways: Joe drapes blankets over her shoulders as she drifts off; Andy lets her fall asleep in her lap; Nicky stays awake with her when he can’t sleep either, offering her a chance to talk that she doesn’t take.

But in the end, Nile’s the one who figures it out.

“It’s the dark, isn’t it?” she asks one afternoon, while they’re sitting side by side at the counter. “The reason you don’t sleep at night.”

Quýnh nods. “It was... very dark. Down there.”

Nile nods, slowly as if she understands. She can’t possibly understand, but Quýnh appreciates the gesture. “I have an idea.” She slides off her stool and runs out of the room, calling out as she goes. “Joe, get the car, we’re going out!”

“Okay!” comes Joe’s response. 

About half an hour later, she returns with a plastic bag containing a small box that she offers to Quýnh. “Here. These might help.”

Quýnh pulls out the box and examines it. “What are they?”

“Fairy lights. Like a string of tiny lights. You can put them up in your room, maybe. They’ll keep the dark away.”

“We have more!” Joe calls from the other room. “They change color, too!”

They spend the rest of the day covering the safehouse in fairy lights, placing their remotes at strategic locations (Nicky’s job) so Quýnh can light her way through the house at night easily. Joe gets distracted with changing them all to different colors, and Nicky has to make sure all the remotes are in the right place, and Nile tries to untangle a string and ends up getting herself tangled in it instead. Quýnh doesn’t think about the water once.

The last room left is Andy and Quýnh’s, and the two of them do that one together, working until the room is completely illuminated. And when they finally fall asleep, Quýnh doesn’t wake until morning.

* * *

The fairy lights travel with them, always going up in the rooms Quýnh sleeps in, the rest of them going up in the safehouses they plan to stay in for longer. But eventually, she gets to the point where she can handle some darkness: not total, but more than she could have before.

She’s still reluctant to take down the fairy lights.

Until Nile buys her a box of glow in the dark stars, as an alternative. Enough to provide the light she needs, but not as bright.

She and Andy spend the whole day sticking the stars to the ceiling. Quýnh has the idea of trying to recreate the constellations they remember, and they cover their ceiling in stars. They don’t get the sky exactly right, but they get most of the constellations, even if they aren’t quite in the right place.

When they’re done, they lie back on the bed side by side. Watching the stars together is something they’ve done since the very first years of travelling together - Quýnh had come out of the water to find so many of them gone, an effect of light pollution. But Andy had shown her areas where it is still the way it used to be, and it had been the first time since she’d gotten free Quýnh didn’t feel out of place.

The stars above them now are artificial, but Quýnh finds that she doesn’t care. Not with Andromache by her side.

That had been all she’d ever really needed, anyway.

“Everything has changed so much,” she whispers. “Even the stars aren’t the same as they used to be.”

“I know,” Andy says. “Things move faster now. You’ll get used to it.”

“We’ve changed.” When she turns to look at Andy, she finds that Andy is already looking at her.

“Some things haven’t.” Andy takes her hand, lacing their fingers together, and squeezes.

“No,” Quýnh agrees, smiling at her. “Some things haven’t.”

**Author's Note:**

> i'm demonicneonfishy on tumblr too if you wanna come say hi!!


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